Our farm has many typical barnyard animals; horses, dogs, cats, geese, ducks, turkeys, guinea hens, and an assortment of chickens. Because we have such a large assortment of horses of varying ages, horses have become a favored subject for my artwork.

This piece was created in the fall of 2005. It is a photorealism drawing of a photograph of one of our horses, a colt named Black Beauty. He was a cross between our double-registered Quarter Horse Stallion, Chief Jackie Skipper, and our black pony/quarter horse cross mare named Ginger. Every year Ginger throws a different colored colt (she’s from an Appaloosa pony). This particular year, she had a jet black stud colt.

I chose to draw him by using artist Chuck Close’s method of photorealism. A sheet of premium drawing paper was sectioned off into 1” squares, as well as a photocopy of the black and white photo. I drew only the shapes and lines that I saw in each grid of the photograph. It was time consuming, but slowly the image of Black Beauty began to emerge on the 16” x 22” piece of drawing paper.

Black Beauty became a foundation for my painting ‘The Boy’s Club’ and ‘Blue Boy’s Club.’